[Haskell-cafe] XML Validation and Digestion in Haskell

[Duncan Coutts]

On Thu, 2007-03-22 at 14:04 +0530, Arun Suresh wrote:

> I am currently working on a project where basically we do a lot of XML
> validation and digestion. For example :
> We recieve an XML document A, if the document passes schema
> validation, we do some business level validations, then from A, we
> create XML digests B, C and D. 
> Our code-base is written completely in Java. We had earlier tried
> using XSLT, but it became too unwieldy to manage (we ended up making
> calls to other Java classes from the XSLT engine)
> 
> The problem we are facing right now is that we have huge hierarchies
> of Validators, Digestors and Contexts. It just doesnt look right. I
> just cant help but wonder if theres a better way of doing this... 

You're not the only one.

> I have been trying to get my hands dirty with Haskell for a couplo
> weeks now. all the while keeping the problem at hand in the back of my
> mind.. I just dont seem to be see how applying functional programming
> concepts can help in this scenario.. Was wondering if somebody could
> probably give me some pointers.. 

Chet Murthy gave a talk on this topic at POPL this year:

"Advanced Programming Languages in Enterprise Software: A
lambda-calculus theorist wanders into an enterprise datacenter"

The slides of the talk are available though sadly you don't get Chet's
entertaining commentary.

www.classes.cs.uchicago.edu/archive/2007/winter/51091-1/papers/Murthy-popl07.pdf

Duncan